calljdku912fandomcom-20200214-history
َAMJ ReadWriteWebs ASS 01
History: Internet, like everything thing else, has gone through so many great changes and advancement upon time. It was first created as a communication device for the United States Navy and only few could use it, because of limited access and the difficulty of use. But in time it has change, shifted and become easier to use to the point that nowadays the majority of people all over the world can access and use it. In addition to the changes of the internet itself, the usage of it has changed dramatically too. At first it was only used as a navigation and communication device for the navy, and little by little with the pass of time it spread among the world to the point that today even a child can use it for many different purposes, such as communication, finding and sharing information, uploading and downloading files, media and etc. With the widely spread of the internet, different businesses realized they could benefit from this new popular widely spread world web. So the creation of many blogs came to be. Soon after everywhere the need of the internet could be felt, and educational system was not an exception either. Effects of the internet on education: With the spread of the internet and students being almost all the time online, surfing the net or communicating with other, it is obvious that the classrooms today are nothing like the traditional ones. They are no longer an isolated class in which the teacher was the authority and students had to believe whatever they were told by the teacher or they had to read huge books to find out if what they had been told is actually correct or not. They can simply use the internet to find the information they need or to pose a question. This has forced the educational system to keep itself up-to-speed with this growing advancement and changes. Today the need of the internet and writing/reading webs is unquestionable in educational systems all over the world. It is a fact that today’s students are far ahead in computer literacy from their teachers. Most students tend to use the internet to find new sources of information because of the abundant and up-to-date resources. Surveys have shown that 81% of students in grades 7-12 have e-mail accounts, 75% have instant Messenger screen names, and 97% believe that it is essential to use internet and modern technology in educational system. Nowadays even a two-year-old kid can use computers, so when a student enters a classroom for the first time in his/her life it is a great possibility that he/she is far more knowledgeable for his/her time that children used to be 20 years ago. This has also caused these children to think differently from adults. This is a warning sign for the educational system, it has to adapt itself to these changes in order to be able to understand students and to provide a true learning environment for them. With the growth and spread of the internet throughout the world and among different ages, teachers, too, must adapt themselves with it. They must try and understand the usage of internet, blogs, wikis, twits and etc. and find some ways to adopt these new technologies into their classrooms. To do this most teachers ask their students to type their homework or just email those homework to them. But this s not enough. This is actually only digitalizing the traditional paper written homework. What they need to do is to invite students to use an online page and share their ideas with each other, make comments, pose questions and etc. In other words teachers need to provide an online interactional environment for the students to make them more and more eager to participate and learn. Traditionally the most used tool for teaching and learning has been book, but in order for the educational system to adapt itself with the modern world it has to bring in use other tools and technologies. Some technologies to be used are as follow: #Weblogs #Wikis #RSS(Really Simple Syndication) #Aggregators #Social bookmarking #Online Photo Galleries #Audio/Video Casting #Twitter #Social Networks This list is only some of the many different types of tools we can use in order to adapt ourselves with the everyday changing and progressing world. The internet has come into public use since about 25 years ago, but this 25 years has only been a "warm-up" for what is about to come. Every day more and more people are using the internet and different technologies are being invented, thus it would be naive to not take modern technologies into account in every different aspects of our social or individual lives. So far we only discussed the merits of technology, but unfortunately technologies, and in this case internet and blogs, have two sides, a good side and a bad side. The good side of the internet and blogging is that it can provide us an unlimited source of information. But the question is: "are these resources safe?” This is the bad side of internet. Not all the information on the web is safe, there are some threatening contents on the web which can be in almost every form, picture, videos, or more dangerous that the others are the blogs which publish really questionable content. When a child with no knowledge background surfs the internet, they are more likely to believe almost anything they come across to, they don’t have the ability to distinguish between true facts and false information. So to solve this problem we have two choices. The first one is to block the sites and blogs which we believe can be harmful for children. This has some disadvantages, though. In some of these websites and social network not all the posts are false and dangerous, and when we block them we are actually blocking the useful data too, which many teacher can benefit from sharing them with their students. The other alternative is to teach our students how to use the internet, how to distinguish between false and wrong. However this is not a simple matter, in order to do so teachers need to make plans and actually adapt themselves with modern technologies and keep themselves up to date. They need to think about some creative and interesting ways to bring internent into their classrooms. Another threat of the internet is piracy. Children must be taught how much personal information they should share on the internet to avoid the dangers of online predators. Based on all this we realize that educational system needs to bring the internet into use, but far more important is to teach students how to use it appropriately, how to work with others, how to share their works and learn from each other. We can see that this is not a simple task, it needs much thinking and planning to realize, so that one day everyone can use the internet appropriately and without the dangers we face today.